Public Talks

Maintain Databases

Journal

You get to the Journal by
selecting the Journal tab on the Maintain
Databases property sheet.

The
Journal property page allows you to create,
maintain and manage free-format notes which are time-stamped and
optionally related to a congregation. The facility is very
flexible. For example, you may use it as:

a work in progress “do not forget” list
to help you keep track of your dealings with other
congregations;

a record of your activity in arranging
home and away talks;

replacement of whatever notes you make
manually in your role as talk coordinator.

You can add new journal entries, edit and
delete existing ones. You may highlight entries as important and
sort them by one of importance, date of last edit, congregation or
contents of the entry.

Note that the Date column
indicates the last time the entry was edited.
However, the database also retains the date when the entry was
created. Although created timestamp details are
not displayed here, you can use them if desired with the custom
report scripting facility.

You may also access and manage journal entries
from the Away/Home Talks
database maintenance form. When you are displaying that form, all
you need to do is right-click on any date in the calendar to
display a context menu which will allow you to:

Please find below a detailed description
about the journal facility. Alternatively, hover your mouse over
the screenshot above and click on any of the control you are
interested. This will take you to the details for that control.

Press the Add button to add a
new journal entry into the database. When clicked, it will display
the Add Journal Entry dialogue. See
Edit (below) for further details.

Press the
Edit button (or the Enter key) to
edit the currently selected journal entry. When clicked, it will
display the Edit Journal Entry
dialogue:

CongregationUse the drop list
to select a congregation to associate this journal entry with. The
default is <None> which is at the very top
of the list.

MemoThis is where you
specify the journal entry text. You can type in a maximum of 255
characters. This should be adequate for most user
requirements.

Flag as ImportantSet this option to
flag the journal entry as important. These journal entries are
indicated with a red flag next to the date stamp:

Using the pre-defined journal memo
textYou can use the droplist to select one of
your predefined journal memo text entries or type in a new one as
required. The predefined memo text is customized by clicking
Options button. This will display a popup dialogue
where you can add, edit or delete as required.

Display as tooltip on
calendarYou can
also get any journal entry to display on your home / away
maintenance calendar as a tooltip (see example on the left).

To do this, set the option Display as tooltip on calendar
and then use the calendar control to specify which date to
associate the journal entry with.

More than one journal entry can be set as a tooltip and they will
show line under the other. However, the tooltip will only display
the first 50 characters for each tip.

Press the Delete button (or the
Delete key) to remove the selected journal entry
from the database. Since the data will be permanently deleted, and
the process can't be undone, you are asked to confirm your
request.

Note that deleting a
congregation (Congregations maintenance page) will
automatically delete all journal entries
associated with it. However, journal entries for congregation
(None) have to be deleted individually.

You can change how the
journal entries are sorted by clicking on any of the column
headings. Click the same column heading a second time to
reverse the sort order.

Your chosen sorting preferences will be
retained for the next time you use the journal facility.

Custom report scripting

The journal information can be printed using
custom report scripting. You will need to do a LOOP of the
Journal table. Then you can use any of the fields
as required within the loop:

JournalID

Unique database record ID (used internally by
the software).

JournalCongregation

Congregation associated with the journal
entry.

JournalDateCreate

Timestamp when the journal entry was
created. See JournalDateEdit for details
about field formatting.

JournalDateEdit

Timestamp when the journal entry was last
edited. You can use the existing date
formatting parameters for this field. However, there are 3
more formatting parameters that you can use to represent the
time portion of the timestamp:

The # character can still
be used with these format specifiers to remove leading zeros (see
the date formatting parameters help topic for full
details). Also, they must be entered using the correct case! For
example, %m (lowercase M) represents the month.

JournalEntry

Journal entry details (up to 255
characters)

JournalFlag

This is the Set as Important
flag

JournalDateCalendar

The schedule date in the Away/Home Talks calendar, on which
this journal entry will show as a tooltip.

JournalCalendarFlag

Flag set to -1 to identify journal entries
associated with the talk schedules. Otherwise, the flag is set to 0
(zero).

There are a couple of sample report scripts
that have been included with the software to show how you might
represent the journal data. They are called Journal
01 and Journal 02 and are available from
your computers Start menu under the Public
Talks\Sample Scripts\Management & Planning menu.

With respects to scripting, note that looping
through Congregations will not find journal
entries for (None). See the sample script
Journal 02 for more details.

Please click here if
you would like to find out how to import sample
scripts.